Techniques for interactive audience participation

At SIGGRAPH in 1991, Loren and Rachel Carpenter unveiled an interactive entertainment system that allowed members of a large audience to control an onscreen game using red and green reflective paddles. In the spirit of this approach, we present a new set of techniques that enable members of an audience to participate, either cooperatively or competitively, in shared entertainment experiences. Our techniques allow audiences with hundreds of people to control onscreen activity by (1) leaning left and right in their seats, (2) batting a beach ball while its shadow is used as a pointing device, and (3) pointing laser pointers at the screen. All of these techniques can be implemented with inexpensive, off the shelf hardware. Me have tested these techniques with a variety of audiences; in this paper we describe both the computer vision based implementation and the lessons we learned about designing effective content for interactive audience participation.